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Everything posted by Dleg

Sorry for creating a new one ... but the old one is so far off the page, I can't bother looking for it.
I saw "True Grit" last night. I loved every minute of it. It was fantastic. Jeff Bridges is not John Wayne, but then again he is a far better actor than John Wayne was, who pretty much played every character as John Wayne. Bridges transformed himself into Rooster Cogburn, a drunk, disheveled, and completely believable character.

Not many houses get destroyed by typhoons (hurricanes) in the Pacific island territories like Guam, because the defacto standard for building construction (for middle class and up, anyway) is reinforced concrete for everything including the roof, and accordion shutters on all windows.

We took a little break from movies due to our move, but my son wanted to see "smallfoot" on the basis of its Rotten Tomatoes score. It was tolerable, but that's as far as I'll go.
Anyone seen Venom? Seriously rotten reviews from critics, but I was wondering what you guys thought.

I've been hearing about these wackos over the past couple years, and recently discovered that a pharmacist I know believes in this shit whole heartedly. He constantly posts on Facebook about it, and uses all sorts of flawed mathematics that he clearly doesn't understand to try to justify it. Nothing will convince him otherwise. What disturbs me most (aside from the movement starting in my home state of Colorado, and apparently headed in part by an engineer) is how this illustrates a poisoning of thought, where people start to genuinely doubt science yet believe in the most improbable, massive conspiracies, all fed by manipulative messages that you can't trust scientists, educated people, professionals, etc. because they must be personally benefitting from it. The Flat Earthers may seem to be the most idiotic of these groups, but the basic tenets underlying their rejection of science are the same as those behind the anti vaccination movement and - yes - climate change denial as well as anti-evolutionism. Because these other erroneous schools of thought were viewed as slightly less absurd and even socially advantageous (in certain religious or political circles), enough people are apparently willing to apply the same level of doubt and skepticism to any number of other scientific theories and fact, especially if it begins to seem popular to do so within their social groups.
I'm worried that the Flat Earthers are just the beginning of a potentially catastrophic expansion of this type of thinking. The start of another Dark Ages, where progress stalls because science becomes distrusted or even illegal in favor of religion, superstition, and mob rule. While I personally believe that religion can coexist with science, as it has for the past few hundred years, I do think that we've been too weak and tolerant in our response to anti vaxxers, creationists and the like, and if we don't start to more vigorously stand up for science and fact, we could very well be condemning our descendants to a much lower quality of life, and eventually threatening our own science-based profession.
http://secondnexus.com/technology-and-innovation/flat-earth-society/?utm_content=inf_10_1164_2&tse_id=INF_230818c094c911e7aba2ffcf7683ccd7